How it changed and does it work?
Department of Political Science, Vanderbilt University
October 22, 2025
About me
Puzzled by why so many people consume openly propaganda media
Studying whether (informational) propaganda is persuasive in Russia and some other countries (?)
Many definitions… and too many arguments about them
Hard vs Soft Propaganda
Framing/Priming vs. Censorship
Summary:
Examples of old dictators calls for open violence: Muammar Gadaffi of Lybia, Francisco Franco of Spain, Mao Zedong of China, Benito Mussolini of Italy…
…But not so much (public) violence today
Evidence: More educated are more aware of press freedom and more critical of government
Do you find the informational autocracy theory persuasive or useful?
Is ideology really gone? Is “illiberal democracy” or “sovereign democracy” not ideology?
How sustainable is informational autocracy? Is it a transitory state?
Theories: Propaganda persuades masses Mattingly and Yao (2022) / sends signal to the elites Huang (2015) / jamms independent media signals Roberts (2018)
Expectation: Propaganda changes the audiences’ beliefs and attitudes in the expected direction (i.e. favoring the regime)
Answer strategy: Mix of field and quasi (?) experiments
1930s: Radio Propagation in Weimar Germany and its Effects on Voting for Nazi Party Adena et al. (2015)
1936-42: Father Coughlin’s Effects on FDR Votes and Sales of US War Bonds Wang (2021)
1943-45: Italians’ Exposure to BBC Radio and Resistance to Nazi Occupation during WWII Gagliarducci et al. (2020)
1994: Exposure to Hutu Nationalist Radio and Participation in Rwandan Genocide Yanagizawa-Drott (2014)
1999: Exposure to Independent TV and Voting in Russia in 1999 Enikolopov, Petrova, and Zhuravskaya (2011)
2012: Random Radio Distribution and Exposure to Radio during the Mali Coup Bleck and Michelitch (2017)
2014: Exposure to Russian TV and Ukrainian Elections in 2014 Peisakhin and Rozenas (2018)
2018: Expansion of Transmission of Independent Radio Station in Tanzania Green et al. (2023)
Precincts within radius of Nazi controlled radio broadcasts were more likely to vote for Hitler, join the Nazi Party and engage in anti-Jewish deportations prior to 1942. But the effects were moderated by past anti-Semitic attitudes.
Leveraging variation in topography (but controlling for distance) identifies negative (-2.4 p.p.) effects on FDR votes which survived even after broadcast going away from public
Using sunspot activity to approximate variation in BBC radio reception finds important role of radio in motivating resistance but no long-lasting anti-Nazi effects
Topographic variation in exposure to RTLM responsible for roughly 10% of killings, especially from violence requiring coordination
Areas with independent NTV Channel had 8.9 p.p. less votes for government party, 6.3 p.p. more votes for opposition and lower turnout
Radio exposure boosted national identity but did not elevate explicit support for the junta
Areas with higher cross-border exposure to Russian state media had higher support for pro-Russian parties, but no effect on turnout
Effects on political interest and knowledge about domestic politics but sporadic changes in attitudes on a range of gender issues (covered by radio)
So is propaganda effective?
Most cutting edge research:
Survey experiments (too many to cover here) with curated content finds there are effects
Studies of social media censorship and the effects of social media / LLMs
Studies of how to combat propaganda and misinformation